2012 was a great year for Apple, and one of the most exciting for them in years. This year brought not only a myriad of new products, like the iPad mini and iPhone 5, but innovative software and services as well such as OS X Mountain Lion and iOS 6.

As 2012 comes to a close, let’s take a look back at Apple’s accomplishments for the year. If you’d like, you can also take a look back at 2011’s year in review here.

The 2012 Olympic Games are set to kick off in less than 2 hours, so we wanted to make sure you had some apps and links to ensure you don’t miss a single lap, dive, punch, or round-off. You’ll find a list of the top apps and a few websites to keep you on track and in the game. Feel free to check them out, or if you have any other suggestions, throw them up in the comments. Now let the games begin!

Macbook Pros with Retina displays; Mountain Lion’s best new features; the secrets of iOS 6; Apple announced a glut of new software and hardware at last week’s World Wide Developers Conference, and if you’d like to relive the glory, or need help making sense of it all, don’ miss the second part of our special-edition WWDC CultCast.

Subscribe now on iTunes to catch both of our special WWDC episodes, and peep the full show notes after the jump!

A hardware bomb! That’s what CultCast special guest and Ars Technica writer Chris Foresman thinks is about to go down at next week’s WWDC. I think he’s right, and on our brand new CultCast we’ll tell you why Apple might be about to refresh every Mac they make. Plus, there’s iOS 6. We’ll tell you what to expect from Apple’s new mobile OS too.

And don’t miss our winner of Faves and Raves, the game where we pitch our favorite hardware/apps and then vote on which is best.

All that and too many LULZ on our brand new CultCast. Subscribe now in iTunes and read on through for our show notes.